Ireland face shortfall ahead of Olympic preparations

The men’s Irish hockey team are €225,000 short of what they need to plan a detailed programme for their participation in the Rio Olympic Games in August. The tournament runs from August 8th to 20th.

The side coached by South African Olympian Craig Fulton faces a pool of six teams where all but Canada are ahead of Ireland in the world rankings and are preparing with professional set ups.

The short fall in what hockey has and what it needs casts light on how team sports are funded by the state and the lack of individual carding schemes for players. Hockey is essentially breaking new ground for funding stakeholders.

None of the Irish players are on individual grants as in other sports.

‘No excuses’

It is the first time the

Irish Sports Council

has ever had to fund a team field sport for Olympic participation as no Irish team has qualified for an Olympic Games since 1948.

"Craig has built a team on accepting no excuses," said interim Irish Hockey Association CEO Rob Johnson. "We will meet the best of the best teams in the world in Rio this summer. The program we need to have in place to compete at that level and against those top teams needs an additional €225K on top of what we received from the Irish Sports Council."

Fulton was known to have wanted to pull his Irish players out of work. Finding some way to make that happen has been a frustrating experience.

At a funding raising event last week organised by Trinity College, Fulton spoke to a public audience of the size of the challenge of playing against German, Dutch and Indian teams and depending on how the results in both pools go, possibly Britain.

In December 2012 a record €440 million of funding for Olympic and Paralympic athletes was announced in Britain with the aim of becoming the first nation in recent history to win more medals at the Games following being the host nation. GB hockey received €20 million for their Rio programme.

In recent years Ireland has lost Ulster players Ian Sloan, David Ames, Iain Lewers and Mark Gleghorn to the British hockey system.

The Irish Hockey Association, in association with a top public relations company, will soon be announcing a development to address the shortfall in financing.